Place-Based Simulation Modeling: Agent-Based Modeling and Virtual Environments

Since the earliest geographical explorations of criminal phenomena, scientists have come to the realization that crime occurrences can often be best explained by analysis at local scales. For example, the works of Guerry and Quetelet—which are often credited as being the first spatial studies of crime—analyzed data that had been aggregated to regions approximately similar to US states. The next major seminal work on spatial crime patterns was from the Chicago School in the 20th century and increased the spatial resolution of analysis to the census tract (an American administrative area that is designed to contain approximately 4,000 individual inhabitants). With the availability of higher-quality spatial data, as well as improvements in the computing infrastructure (particularly with respect to spatial analysis and mapping), more recent empirical spatial criminology work can operate at even higher resolutions; the “crime at places” literature regularly highlights the importance of analyzing crime at the street segment or at even finer scales. These empirical realizations—that crime patterns vary substantially at micro places—are well grounded in the core environmental criminology theories of routine activity theory, the geometric theory of crime, and the rational choice perspective. Each theory focuses on the individual-level nature of crime, the behavior and motivations of individual people, and the importance of the immediate surroundings. For example, routine activities theory stipulates that a crime is possible when an offender and a potential victim meet at the same time and place in the absence of a capable guardian. The geometric theory of crime suggests that individuals build up an awareness of their surroundings as they undertake their routine activities, and it is where these areas overlap with crime opportunities that crimes are most likely to occur. Finally, the rational choice perspective suggests that the decision to commit a crime is partially a cost-benefit analysis of the risks and rewards. To properly understand or model these three decisions it is important to capture the motivations, awareness, rationality, immediate surroundings, etc., of the individual and include a highly disaggregate representation of space (i.e. “micro-places”). Unfortunately one of the most common methods for modeling crime, regression, is somewhat poorly suited capturing these dynamics. As with most traditional modeling approaches, regression models represent the underlying system through mathematical aggregations. The resulting models are therefore well suited to systems that behave in a linear fashion (e.g., where a change in model input leads to a predictable change in the model output) and where low-level heterogeneity is not important (i.e., we can assume that everyone in a particular group of people will behave in the same way). However, as alluded to earlier, the crime system does not necessarily meet these assumptions. To really understand the dynamics of crime patterns, and to be able to properly represent the underlying theories, it is necessary to represent the behavior of the individual system components (i.e. people) directly. For this reason, many scientists from a variety of different disciplines are turning to individual-level modeling techniques such as agent-based modeling

Governing the Nomadic Children of the ‘Dangerous Classes’: A Genealogy of Youth Justice analysed through the Developmental Prism of the Youth Rehabilitation Order

This thesis performs a Foucauldian genealogy of youth justice, situating the generic community based sentence of the Youth Rehabilitation Order (YRO) - introduced in 2008 - at the frontier of an emasculating developmental trajectory which has informed youth justice policy and practice since the foundation of the juvenile court. It is argued that the YRO’s ‘governmentalisation’ (Foucault, 2007) of youth justice – its movement of sentencing determination and oversight from the judiciary to the executive - enabling the ‘young offender’ to be governed within a complex of managerial and administrative apparatuses with reference to bio-political ‘norms’ – has engendered the formation of a paradigm of governance which obfuscates the distinction between executive and judicial powers. It is expounded that this may serve to create administrative ‘petty sovereigns’ (Oksala, 2007) largely unhindered by judicial restraints, potentially exposing the ‘young offender’ to exceptional sovereign violence i.e., violence which is direct, arbitrary and subject to severely weakened judicial regulation (Oksala, 2010: 42). The genealogy, analysed through the developmental prism of the nine community based sentences which the YRO replaces, traces the ‘governmentalisation’ of youth justice, illustrating how this obfuscatory paradigm of governance is programmed within its hybrid ‘penal-welfare’ evolution. The thesis illustrates that at the apotheosis of the ‘welfare-era’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s a youth justice strategy of ‘familial enclosure’ – aiming to immobilise the working class child - delimited the exercise of exceptional sovereign violence to within the walls of the nuclear family. It is shown that the disintegration of the ‘underclass’ familial enclosure in an advanced-liberal Britain has rendered this governmental strategy of ‘sedentarisation’ untenable. The belief is promulgated that the YRO, which provides a nomadic form of electronic surveillance and control, is a technology of replacement for this disintegrating enclosure, introduced by a managerial Youth Justice Board in response to the return of the nomadic children of the ‘dangerous classes’ (Lea, 1997). The genealogy suggests that the YRO may facilitate the diffusion of exceptional sovereign violence throughout the ‘social’, exercised at-a-distance upon a nomadic population of ‘underclass children’. It is also asserted that the YRO’s amalgamation of the ‘child in need’ and the ‘young offender’ is indicative of a wider process of ‘net-widening’ and ‘mesh thinning’ (Cohen, 1985) in which the ‘child in need’ is being captured within the penal net. A ‘de-governmentalisation’ of youth justice through a return to the ‘justice-model’ of youth justice policy and practice is proposed as a remedy to these issues. This, it will be espoused, will de-obfuscate executive and judicial powers and reign in administrative ‘petty sovereigns’ by subjecting them to effective judicial controls, preventing the ‘underclass child’s’ exposure to exceptional sovereign violence. The potential for the offence-centric ‘justice-model’ to restrict the orbit of the youth justice system will also be explored

Understanding the deterrent effect of police patrol

The fact that crime clusters spatially has been known since at least the early 19th century. However, understanding of the extent and nature of this clustering at different areal units, and the fact that crime also clusters at different temporal scales is relatively new. Where previously the most at-risk areas (or `hot-spots') of crime were defined over areas the size of city districts and for periods of months if not years, the last decade has seen the focus shift to micro-places - areas of only a few hundred metres across - which are only `hot' for days or even hours. The notion that visible police presence in crime hot-spots can deter crime is not new and has been the basis of police patrols for two centuries. This deterrent effect has been well evidenced in many previous studies, both by academics and police practitioners. However, evaluations of these more recent micro-level hot-spot patrol strategies face significant analytic challenges and data quality concerns. They also often assume levels of police activity at the micro-area level (an `intention-to-treat' design) rather than measuring it directly. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the accuracy and precision of data that can be used to evaluate micro-level hot-spot patrol strategies and the implications this has for any analysis conducted using such data at these micro-level geographies. This thesis begins by outlining the relevant literature regarding place-based policing strategies and the current understanding of how crime clusters in both space and time. It continues by highlighting the data challenges associated with evaluating micro-level police interventions through the use of an illustrative analytic strategy before using a self-exciting point process model to evaluate the effects of police foot patrol in micro-level hot-spot under the assumption that the crime and patrol data being used are accurate. This is followed by two chapters which investigate the quality of the two datasets. Finally, the point-process evaluation is re-conducted using simulated data that takes account of the uncertainty of the datasets to demonstrate how data quality issues effect the result of such an evaluation and ultimately, the perceived efficacy of these highly-focussed policing strategies

Características de los vecindarios y la distribución espacial de problemas sociales en la ciudad de Valencia

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to explore the influence of neighborhood-level variables on the spatial and spatio-temporal distribution of different social problems in the city of Valencia. In Study 1, we present data on the development and validation of an observational instrument to assess neighborhood disorder. Results supported a three-factor model (physical disorder, social disorder and physical deterioration), and they showed good reliability and validity evidences. In Study 2, we assess the psychometric properties of a neighborhood disorder scale using Google Street View. Results supported a bifactorial solution with a general factor (general neighborhood disorder) and two specific factors (physical disorder and physical decay), and also showed good indicators of reliability and validity. In Study 3, we analyze the spatial distribution of drug-related police interventions and the neighborhood characteristics influencing these spatial patterns. Results indicated that high physical decay, low socioeconomic status, and high immigrant concentration were associated with high levels of drug-related police interventions. In Study 4, we analyze the spatio-temporal distribution of alcohol outlet density and its relationship with neighborhood characteristics. Results showed that off-premise density was higher in areas with lower economic status, higher immigrant concentration, and lower residential instability; restaurant and cafe density was higher in areas with higher spatially-lagged economic status, and bar density was higher in areas with higher economic status and higher spatially-lagged economic status. Furthermore, restaurant and cafe density was negatively associated with alcohol-related police calls-for-service, while bar density was positively associated with alcohol-related calls-for-service. In Study 5, we analyze the spatio-temporal distribution of suicide-related emergency calls. Results showed the importance of using a spatio-temporal modeling that also includes a seasonality effect. In Study 6, we analyze the relationship of suicide-related calls with neighborhood-level variables. Results showed that neighborhoods with lower levels of education level and population density, and higher levels of residential instability, percentage of one-person households and aging population had higher levels of suicide-related calls for service. Finally, in Study 7, we analyze the influence of university campuses on intimate partner violence against women risk. Results showed that the distance to the university campuses was associated with an increased risk of intimate partner violence against women, once controlled for other types of neighborhood-level variables. This doctoral thesis contributes to the understanding of the neighborhood-level characteristics associated with different social problems. These results are useful when planning and implementing community-level prevention and intervention strategies

Examining Victimization in South Korea 1993-2010: A Comparative Application of Ecological Theories of Crime

Theoretical approaches aimed at the understanding of population level criminal offending and victimization generally revolve around two major criminological theories: Social disorganization and routine activities/lifestyle theories. These theoretical frameworks were developed and have been examined extensively in a Western context (primarily in the U.S.) and provide evidence of both individual and aggregate indicators for the explanation of variations in crime. More recently, these approaches have been extended to the Eastern context as increasing numbers of studies have been conducted outside of the U.S. This application is relatively recent and the literature has yet to find conclusive supporting evidence for these ecological theories on crime due to the inconclusive and inconsistent results, which tend to vary by country. This dissertation contributes to this line of research by testing the applicability of these theoretical approaches to South Korea using 7 sets of data from the Korean Criminal Victimization Survey (KCVS) from 1993 to 2010. The results provide evidence of the utility of these approaches in the context of South Korea with variation by level of analysis and year that can be explained by understanding the recent social/political history of South Korea. For instance, higher collective efficacy at the macro level was associated with lower victimization over all years in the study with the exception of the year after the national financial crisis in 1997. Also, high personal target suitability levels at the individual level were related to a high likelihood of personal victimization while the household guardianship indicator reduced household victimization. Additionally, sensitivity analysis helped to identify the proper time-lag associated with the effect of ecological variables on victimization. In sum, this dissertation found valuable evidence for ecological theories on crime and victimization associated with the cultural context of South Korea within a recent temporal perspective

Transferring prisoners within the EU framework: its cosmopolitan reflections and existing European detention norms

A perverse side-effect of our interconnected world is that also crime crosses more and more borders. As a result, judicial cooperation in criminal matters is crucial before and after a criminal sentence. The increased global connectivity also gave rise to new paradigms in social sciences. As such, the paradigm of cosmopolitanism has been researched extensively in social sciences but has been largely neglected in criminology. By analyzing case law, European detention norms and EU legal instruments the submission critically evaluates cosmopolitanism in the area of EU judicial cooperation in criminal matters and more specifically to the transfer of prisoners. Cosmopolitanism is perfectly reflected in the mutual recognition principle as the cornerstone to develop the EU area of freedom, security and justice, based on notions of equivalence and trust. This principle is justified because every member state signed the European Convention of Human Rights and is a party of the EU Charter on Human Rights. On the other hand, reality revealed that mutual recognition is not absolute and mutual trust cannot be blind. An IRCP study, published in 2011, highlighted the various and often detrimental material prison conditions in different member states. These variances undermine the assumed mutual trust between member states although European detention norms - such as the European Prison Rules and CPT reports’ already exist. These norms aren’t legally binding and are still considered as “soft law”, simultaneously they gain importance due to increased reference in the ECtHR judgments. The cosmopolitan outlook by the member states related to the transfer of prisoners is in this submission highlighted as being both problematic and promising. Hereby it appears as if the EU rhetoric being a “unity in diversity”, by applying mutual recognition, is dominantly used to accommodate member states purposes rather than giving a central role to the individual

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Crime Incidents for Forensic Investigation

Crime analysis and mapping has been routinely employed to gather intelligence which informs security efforts and forensic investigations. Traditionally, geographic information systems in the form of third-party mapping applications are used for analysis of crime data but are often expensive and lack flexibility, transparency, or efficiency in uncovering associations and relationships in crime. Each crime incident and article of evidence within that incident has an associated spatial and temporal component which may yield significant and relevant information to the case. Wide variations exist in the techniques that departments use and commonly spatial and temporal components of crime are evaluated independently, if at all. Thus, there is a critical need to develop and implement spatio-temporal investigative strategies so police agencies can gain a foundational understanding of crime occurrence within their jurisdiction, develop strategic action for disruption and resolution of crime, conduct more informed investigations, better utilize resources, and provide an overall more effective service. The purpose of this project was to provide foundational knowledge to the investigative and security communities and demonstrate the utility of empirical spatio-temporal methods for the assessment and interpretation of crime incidents. Two software packages were developed as an open source (R) solution to expand current techniques and provide an implementable spatio-temporal methodology for crime analysis. Additionally, an actionable method for near repeat analysis was developed. Firstly, the premise of the near repeat phenomenon was evaluated across crime types and cities to discern optimal parameters for spatial and temporal bandwidths. Using these parameters, a method for identifying near repeat series was developed which draws inter-incident linkages given the spatio-temporal clustering of the incidents. Resultant crime networks and maps provide insight regarding near repeat crime incidents within the landscape of their jurisdiction for targeted investigation. Finally, a new approach to the geographic profiling problem was developed which assesses and integrates the travel environment of road networks, beliefs and assumptions formed through the course of the investigation process about the perpetrator, and information derived from the analysis of evidence. Each piece of information is evaluated in conjunction with spatio-temporal routing functions and then used to update prior beliefs about the anchor point of the perpetrator. Adopting spatio-temporal methodologies for the investigation of crime offers a new framework for forensic operations in the investigation of crime. Systematic consideration about the value and implications of the relationship between space, time, and crime was shown to provide insight regarding crime. In a forward-looking sense this work shows that the interpretation of crime within a spatio-temporal context can provide insight into crime occurrence, linkage of crime incidents, and investigations of those incidents